Bio

The Managing Partner of Shalakany Law Office which was established in 1912 and with over 60 attorneys and fee earners between Cairo and Alexandria is one of the leading law firms in the Middle East. He heads the Litigation and Arbitration Department and Intellectual Property Group. Khaled El Shalakany obtained in 1978 his B.Eng. in electronics and communications engineering, with distinction, from the Faculty of Engineering, at Cairo University. After graduating he joined IBM Egypt as a computer system engineer. In 1981 he was awarded the IBM Systems Engineering Professional Excellence Award. Khaled El Shalakany obtained in 1982 a professional post-graduate diploma in management from the American University in Cairo. As a law student, he represented the University of Toronto Faculty of Law in the Jessup International Law Competition. In 1984/1985 he was selected as the Faculty's Chief Justice of the Moot Court. Khaled El Shalakany obtained his LL.B. in 1985 (as per University of Toronto – this is a post-graduate degree equivalent to the U.S. Juris Doctor) and joined the Law firm of Fasken & Calvin in Toronto as an articling lawyer. He successfully completed the bar admissions course and exams and was called to the Ontario Bar as a Barrister and Solicitor in 1987. He then joined Shalakany Law Office in Cairo as a legal consultant specializing in intellectual property matters, labour law, computer law, construction law, corporate commercial law and international arbitration. He was admitted as a member of the Egyptian Bar Association in 1989. He became a partner of Shalakany Law Office in 1990, and in 1993 he was registered as a patents and trademarks attorney in Egypt. In 1992, after taking a one-year sabbatical from his firm, Khaled El Shalakany obtained an LL.M in international law from Cambridge University. As part of his research work, he wrote a thesis on the legal status of Jerusalem under International Law, which was subsequently published by the Egyptian Society of International Law. He headed the Unilever Arabia Group’s Legal Department as senior in-house counsel based in Dubai from 1993 to 1996. He was licensed to act as legal advisor in Dubai from 1996 – 2012 and during this period provided legal services to clients in the UAE and the GCC in a number of fields including companies law, construction law, agencies and intellectual property. In the course of his practice in Egypt, Khaled El Shalakany has acted as a legal advisor in late 1980s and early 1990s to the Egyptian Cabinet Information and Decision Support Center on intellectual property law and computer law in particular. In this capacity he wrote a number of research papers and articles on the protection of computer software under copyright law and assisted in the drafting of proposals for the amendment of regulations under the Egyptian Copyright Law to provide protection for computer software. He has participated as organizer and/or speaker in a number of seminars and conferences on this topic. At the invitation of the US Government, he attended the Copyright Institute organized by the Library of Congress. Khaled El Shalakany, as part of his Firm Construction Practice Group, also participated in the preparation of the Arabic text of the FIDIC Red Book (4th edition) and acted as counsel, expert and arbitrator in many arbitrations and court cases relating to construction disputes. He is considered as one of the leading experts on construction law in the Arab Middle East. These cases included the case concerning the construction of the Ahmed Hamdi Tunnel under the Suez Canal which involved the decennial liability of contractors. As an expert on construction law, he has also participated in a number of seminars and lectures on the FIDIC Red Book. As a senior partner in his Firm, he oversees its Litigation practice which handles on average 800 on-going cases. In 1992 and until 1997 Khaled El Shalakany enrolled at London University (SOAS) as a part-time post graduate research student. Based on his research and experience he obtained in 1999 a Ph.D. from Barrington University (now the University of Atlanta a postsecondary distance educational institution accredited up to March 2013 by the DETC, USA), the subject of his thesis being a comparative analysis of the copyright laws of Egypt, UAE and Saudi Arabia with emphasis on protection of computer software. Part of the research work that culminated in his thesis has been published in articles in the Middle East Commercial Law Review (Sweet & Maxwell-UK) and other journals. He is of the opinion that his post graduate law degree from the University of Toronto and his degree from Barrington each separately grants him the title of ‘Dr.’ He appreciates that given that the University of Toronto law degree was only titled Juris Doctor as of the year 2000, and given the controversial status of Barrington’s accreditation this view may not be shared by some, and accordingly he is equally happy to be called Eng., Maître and/or Mr. Khaled El Shalakany is registered as an arbitrator with the Cairo Regional Center for International Commercial Arbitration and the Egyptian Ministry of Justice, and since 1997 has been a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators in London. He has acted as arbitrator, advocate and expert in over 95 international commercial arbitrations (including ICC, ICSID, LCIA, DIAC, CRCICA and Bahrain GCC arbitrations). He is recognized as a top ranked practitioner in arbitration by both the Legal 500 and the Chambers guides, and as a top ranked lawyer by the IFLR. His common law and civil law experience and credentials have allowed him to bridge some of the differences between the legal concepts of the civil law systems and those of the common law. His Engineering background has also allowed him to deal with complex technical and engineering issues. Khaled El Shalakany has been a speaker in a number of international conferences and has organized and led several workshops on Law Firm Management conducted in conjunction with the law societies in Bahrain, the UAE and Kuwait. He has lectured at the American University in Cairo, the French University in Egypt and Cairo University. Khaled El Shalakany has a number of published works which apart from articles, include the translation into Arabic of Eric Fromm's 'The Heart of Man', the Chapter on Egypt in 'Legal Aspects of Doing Business in the Middle East' (Kluwer-Boston), the PLC (Practical Law) Dispute Resolution Multi-Jurisdictional Guide, the PLC (Practical Law) Arbitration Multi-Jurisdictional Guide and the IBA Arbitration Country Guide (Egypt Chapter). He has also published in English two collections of short stories and photographs (‘20x20’ Trafford Canada 1999 and ‘Cleopatra’s Bath’ Trafford 2016) and a booklet in Arabic on political science. In 2017 a collection of his short stories was published in Egypt (“The Aragooz” Dar El Thaqafa El Gadida, Cairo) with a translation into Egyptian. He is the founder and Editor in Chief of his Firm’s publication THE ADVOCATE. Khaled El Shalakany is an amateur Egyptologist. In 2019 he obtained through distance learning an undergraduate Certificate in Egyptology from the University of Manchester and is currently enrolled in the University’s distance learning MA in Egyptology program. Khaled El Shalakany is one of the founding members of the Egyptian Social Democratic Party that was formed after the 2011 revolution. He is a founding member of the Egyptian Society of Information Management and the Egyptian Society for the Protection of Industrial Property. He is the principal founder and Chairman of the Egyptian ADR Association that is pioneering the application in Egypt of mediation for the settlement of business disputes. His other interests include astronomy, history, Egyptology, philosophy and photography.